Western Digital Introduces Media Savvy My Passport AV External HDD

Western Digital has found a pretty safe spot when it comes to external
storage, and anyone who has followed the industry for any amount of
time will notice that the My Book and My Passport lines haven't changed
much over the years. Today, WD is adding a slight twist to the existing
My Passport line by introducing the My Passport AV Portable Media
Drives, which are said to be "optimized for video storage and playback."

These are designed to work with select Sony camcorders, Blu-ray players
and other popular media players, but we have to question this claim.
How can an external HDD really be tailor made to work with media?
Aren't they all? We suspect this is just a bit of marketing makeup in
order to get the attention of those looking to store their growing
media collection, but frankly, we suspect this drive will work just as
well for any other type of storage. One notable extra is this unit's
ability to operate seamlessly with Sony's Direct Copy feature (for
archiving footage from Sony camcorders), and the compact size makes 'em
easy to squeeze into most any AV center.

As of now, the drive is available in a 320GB version for $109.99, but
we suspect bigger versions will be out soon. Also, WD points out that
this drive is fully compatible with Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows
7 and the most recent versions of OS X (Tiger, Leopard, Snow Leopard).

The My Passport AV portable media drives are compatible with the following devices:

For a complete list of devices compatible with the My Passport AV portable media drives, please visit the WD Web site. A product specification sheet and photos of My Passport AV drives are available on the company's Web site at http://www.westerndigital.com/MyPassportAV.